


Cast in the Name of God

by MarsFlameSniper



Category: Persona 5
Genre: F/F, Gen, Makoto Niijima Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 13:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarsFlameSniper/pseuds/MarsFlameSniper
Summary: Adolescence is hard enough without a living myth in your head. Makoto makes it work, somehow.Written for Makoto Niijima Week on Tumblr





	Cast in the Name of God

She's standing knee deep in a lake with her pockets full of stones. Johanna pulls her free, kisses her fiercely and then throws her back in.

_Time to learn how to swim My Queen, and learn from all you take as you struggle in the deep._

It resonates. Her soul had howled in the long dark of what would become the rest of her life and she intends to struggle with every breath she can. She takes everything from Kaneshiro, feels a cage door slam open with her mind and roars words so harsh that they tear at the skin of her throat, feels the molten heat of her anger slick like blood on her tongue.

Makoto goes home that same night and sits on her bed, laughing so hard that her head aches. Then all at once she's crying and vomiting and still laughing so _hard._ Sae knocks on her door but she doesn't know how to get up and answer.

She wages holy war.

_Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith._

Fists rain down in a thundercrash chorus and she wishes her father were here to see it. Her wrath dims the hellfire and she fears no Shadow within the valley of Mementos, feels unstoppable with purpose.

She takes walks through the fog at night, says nothing to her sister who either doesn't know or doesn't care to know, and instead mutters Latin she learns from books she's only just beginning to realise the significance of.

(Akira reads the same kinds of books. He catches her eye in the library when the sun's shining bright enough to split him in two)

“I don't care about that,” she interrupts Sae one evening, concerned more with the future of a girl she barely knows than her own because it's more than The Right Thing to Do. It's about reaching out in the darkness and finding someone who hasn't given up on you.

_Do not fear for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God._

“Hey, you're doing pretty good!” Ann tells her in the summer, because Makoto had never rid herself of the tendency to bear unneeded hardship and had felt inches away from a breakdown trying to conceive of how to feel okay. They buy each other crepes and discuss all the ways they haven't died.

Training herself to lose control feels counterproductive. When she fights she feels righteous, venomous, bike throttle raw in her palms. And she begs herself not to forget it later, nursing broken knuckles and wondering whether she’d remember how to feel human again if she replaced each and every bone in her body. Tore out the wrathful figure under her skin and substituted her with someone untainted and new.

Her feet often take her to the church in Kanda. The first few times it happens she worries: the trip there is a complete blank. But over time she learns to accept it as an occasional detour her life takes her on. She's seen Ryuji gaze wistfully out at the ocean on the rare occasions they all go to the beach together, so she doesn't think it's just her.

There's a girl she sees there often. From Kousei. Yusuke had told her that she was called Hifumi, and that she was an excellent strategist.

Three weeks after she learns this, Makoto fucks her in the confessional, breathes in the scent of her sandalwood perfume and tears her apart in the way she's seen her do to others on the battlefield. She doesn't know how to say “I love you” without associating it with the dead, but Hifumi seems to understand anyway.

_Love is the fulfilment of the law._

The tires of her motorcycle skid dangerously through storms as she travels the city without a helmet, because freedom and recklessness go hand in hand and just once she wants to try being not old enough to know any better. She (probably) doesn't brake too hard at a red light and crash, but her spine feels numb for three days afterwards and she hallucinates a tear on Sae's cheek. It feels like enough.

She wonders where she's picked up the habit of tracing a crucifix across her body before she sleeps.

_We keep his commands and do what pleases him._

There's her own destination at the end of this and even if it is fighting evil for the rest of her life she still has promises to keep.

The next time she sees Hifumi they go on a date. The next time they all see Haru it feels like a hundred years must have passed, for there to be so much iron in her gaze. Makoto feels proud. Ashamed. Confused.

“You're not going to win.” Shadows mutter as Queen holds her revolver between their eyes. Futaba chats with them as they fight; pointing out all the times they nearly shoot each other instead because it's hard to aim in the dark-

-and makoto hates the dark hates hates hates they’re going to get me they're going to _kill me-_

-but they manage anyway.

“I can't forgive you yet.” There's no point replacing one set of dead-ends with another, but she kisses the weaknesses of her sister on the forehead and marvels at how chains can rattle in agitation when they don’t really exist.

_If they repent forgive them if they repent forgive them if they repent forgive if they if they if if if if_

There was an identity she had once. Before this. It crumbles in her palms like sand but she builds anyway. Tries to like herself beyond what others say and the growl of the engine in her brain. It feels like she's been born for these moments.

This was learning from what she took. Johanna curses up a firestorm but there's no denying the pride in her words. She'd known, somehow.


End file.
